5 Reasons Your Pizza Crust Didn’t Brown (How To Fix It)

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Everyone seeks that lovely browned crust that looks great before you’ve even taken a bite of it. Pretty easy to achieve if you have a professional pizza oven – but home cooks? Let’s talk about some reasons your pizza didn’t brown.

• It wasn’t cooked for long enough
• The wrong flour was used
• The oven was not hot enough
• Didn’t use the right equipment
• Dough was over fermented
• Consider sugar as an ingredient
• Consider fermenting for longer

If you’re struggling with making your dough or stretching it out, check out my pizza making video course which covers dough and the other ingredients and tools in depth.

Here are some explanations and some adjustments you can make to your pizza making.

1. Not Cooked For Long Enough

This is pretty obvious, but let’s start here first. Browning happens from the “Maillard reaction” – where amino acids and sugars react at higher temperatures.

Think searing steaks, toasting marshmallows, and crusty bread. We need to expose the pizza crust to heat for long enough for this to happen.

Most beginner pizza makers will not cook the pizza for long enough, including me when I started. I think there is a feeling you might overcook the pizza.

But in reality, the pizza can take more cooking than you think. And by extending the cooking time for a few minutes more than you initially think, will fully brown the cheese and get the crust to go darker.

Look at the two following images. The first might be seen as “done” by a beginner, but it is still lacking color in the crust. The second image is when the pizza is really done. Probably about 2-3 minutes between the images.

In a home oven, I would recommend cooking the pizza for long enough so that the crust and cheese are on the verge of going from brown to black.

You obviously don’t want to burn it because that will give a bitter taste. This timing depends on the oven temperature and the equipment.

For me, I can finish a pizza on a pizza steel in about 5 minutes if my oven is very hot. Sometimes this might take up to 7-8 minutes if it is a bit cooler.

Use your eyes to judge, you can always remove the pizza and spin it around for any spots cooking faster than others.

2. The Wrong Flour Was Used

Using a “00” graded pizza flour is not the best flour to use in a home oven. This flour is milled very fine and very white, and is designed by the Italians for cooking in an extremely hot wood fired oven.

Because it’s so hot, the idea of using flour that browns quickly would actually be worse.

So in a home oven, as it cooks much cooler, using a 00 flour will actually take the pizza longer to brown, and it will probably stay pale. Instead, use regular bread flour which is better suited for cooking pizza in a conventional home oven.

Some good brands are King Arthur in the US and Allinson in the UK.

3. The Oven Was Not Hot Enough

It’s best practice to get your oven as hot as possible for cooking pizza. The idea is that the heat makes the pizza rise quickly and gives the crust a better texture.

As we’ve mentioned about browning, heat is the key to turning the sugars in the dough darker. On top of that, using a lower heat the extended cooking times will also dry a pizza out and make it tough.

So set your oven to the highest setting and let it preheat for at least 45 minutes. If you are using a pizza stone or steel then you should heat this in the oven from the start.

Inside the oven, we want the correct setup so that the base cooks evenly with the toppings and crust. No point in having a burnt base and raw toppings or bland crust.

This might take a bit of experimentation to get the oven shelf placement right. I typically use the shelf 2/3s of the way up the oven. This means it is near enough to the heating element at the top of the oven, but easy enough to transfer the pizza inside from my pizza peel.

Each oven is different and I have heard some people using the bottom shelves as the best – so experiment with yours.

4. Didn’t Use The Right Equipment

My best tip for making pizza in a home oven is to use a pizza “steel”. It adds intense heat from below for amazing crusts – I have this size steel from Amazon which is lower priced than other brands but works perfectly. Steel conducts heat better than stone, they don’t shatter and are easier to clean.

If it’s out of your price range then the 2nd best option is a pizza stone made from cordierite. To see a round-up of the most important pizza equipment check out my essential pizza equipment list.

Pizza stones and steels generally heat up the oven to a more stable high temperature, and really ensure the base cooks through well.

Make sure they are preheated thoroughly, and transfer the pizza to the oven with a pizza peel. This minimizes the time spent with the oven door open, which lets heat out.

See all my recommended equipment that I use.

5. Dough Was Over Fermented

I have never come across this problem but have read about it. The idea is that the fermentation has caused the yeast to consume so much sugar in the dough, that no more is left to cause browning.

How common this is, is up for debate. It is quite clear if your dough has over fermented though.

You will notice that the dough has risen up with gas and has now fallen down from deflation. It smells strongly of brewed beer and is weak and floppy to handle.

While this might not be the most common of issues, it might be one to note if you were wondering why a certain batch of dough didn’t make the best pizza.

Other Suggested Fixes

These fixes sort of feel like you are addressing the symptom rather than going right to the cause. But for some people, their ingredients and setup, it can be hard to get the crust they want.

Here are a few things you can do to try and help get a browner crust.

Ferment For Longer

If you want to go from a uniform brown to a surface of charred spots, you need to have longer fermentation.

The idea behind this is slightly unknown to me, it may be the breakdown of sugars over fermentation time. Or it might be that the dough’s gluten becomes less tight, allowing thinner bubbles to form and brown quickly.

Try using less yeast and fermenting the dough for 24-48 hours in the fridge.

As you can see, a nice airy crust will produce a crust that is charred dark brown.

Use Sugar In The Dough

Some recipes add sugar to a dough, claiming that it helps in the browning of the crust. But in reality is this true?

Bread contains no sugar but you will often see a dark crust on bread. There are sugars and protein in the dough which should brown by themselves if given the right conditions.

Check out my pizza dough recipe for some good instructions on dough.

With that being said, you can try to help this along further by adding some sugar to your dough. More sugar will naturally brown more, but it will also sweeten the dough.

Try adding 2% of the flour weight in sugar as a starting point. You could increase this by a percentage point at a time until you find it suits your taste.

If you don’t want to add sugar directly to the dough, you can also brush sugar on the crust. Mix some water and sugar and this can be used on the crust before it enters the oven.

A bit like an egg wash on a pie, this can also help the crust deepen in color.

Conclusion

There you have 5 reasons why your crust isn’t browning. Following some good instructions with the right flour and you should be able to get there.

Adding sugar isn’t a necessary step, and is one I avoid now. But you can add a small amount if need be, and it will help the dough with little effect on the taste.